There's no doubt that (in order to sell something) there must be a demand. However, with regard to disease, people do not generally develop symptoms that produce disability or impairment of life functioning based on hearing of a new disease. Those who do are referred to as hypochondriacs--certainly not in the mainstream. In my view, what many of these companies are doing is putting a label on a symptom or a cluster of symptoms and performing scientific studies to show that the product alieviates those symptoms. The fact that a name actually exists for someone's biologic disorder probably provides a great deal of relief on its own. However, this is nothing new. Pharma companies have been discovering organisms as the cause for various infectious diseases and then creating products to treat them. They have been discovering biochemical pathways of inflammation and then creating a variety of anti-inflammatory drugs to treat. And we could go on. If there was no symptomatic relief (regardless of what the label on the disease is), the drugs wouldn't sell because there would be no demand. Could certain drugs be mis-prescribed? Yes, I think so. Do we have a conspiracy here? I think not.

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